This paper is an autoethnography of the author’s experiences taking a six-week, asynchronous, online, faculty development class for educators at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Using narrative inquiry, the author details her learning and the ways her experiences support adult learning theory. Implications of this research suggests that adult learning theory should also be applied to faculty development experiences because teachers are more likely to benefit from online faculty development if they are given the opportunity to direct the course of their development to suit their own needs.
This article considers how issues of power and legitimacy in technical communication are connected to clearly defining what a technical communicator does. An articulation of what technical communicators do can grant the field power in presenting a united front to employers with respect to the value technical communicators bring to the workplace. So as to leverage the power and legitimacy associated with articulating what technical communicators do, this article reviews and revises the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)'s definition of technical communicator.To effectively revise the OOH's definition, this article reviews academic and practitioner scholarship in technical communication and the administration of technical and professional writing programs. It demonstrates that concerns about practical skills, conceptual skills, and flexibility are related to legitimacy and power. These concerns can be used as criteria to evaluate and revise the OOH's definition of technical communicator. In closing, the article discusses the benefits associated with the revised definition and how these benefits are related to issues of power and legitimacy in the field.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.